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Monday, November 9, 2009

Seven Days Time Machine

Hi everybody,

some of you might have been at the OpenOffice.org Conference 2009 or already read some of the (few) blog comments. I'd hoped to provide similar insights like I did in my blog comments covering the OOoCon last year (first posting). Time for changing that!

But is a wrap-up sufficient? Surely not, since many little things happened which are worth mentioning... So what about a "Time Machine" to travel back 7 days? This would be a great chance to re-experience the great time we've had at the conference...

November 2ndOne of the best things being at the OOoCon is to meet other people who share the same ideas. Thus, I have been more than happy to meet André Schnabel right after my breakfast. Even better, he joined me to do some sightseing in Orvieto. There, Andreas Mantke was already awaiting us.

Our hotel was located outside the city, so we moved on until we - astonished - noticed that the center of the city was really sitting on a huge rock. See for yourself...

Once in the city, Andreas joined us and we started exploring. Of course, we wanted to see the famous "Duomo di Orvieto". It is somehow funny to go through tiny alleys and then - suddenly - a very huge building appears.

Don't worry, I'll post some more pictures when the weather improves. It was even a bit foggy that day...

Inside the building everyone will notice how well it is built and how good it was preserved over the centuries. Mmh, that seems similar to what we aim for with regard to ODF - being understandable even after a looong time. Moreover, being independent from the software which was used to create the documents.

Why this sudden change of subject? Because we noticed something noisy going on. So we went inside a building and found the people of the ODF|Plugfest celebrate their lunch break. Did you ever wondered how this looks like? Here are the action-packed photo ;-)

The good thing is, that we've also met Oliver-Rainer Wittmann (on the right) who kindly supported us with a map and some leaflets covering touristic highlights. Thanks a lot!

I'll spare you the rest of the day ... except for the arrival of Jacqueline Rahemipour. After meeting her at the train station, we did one of the best things you can do in Orvieto - getting an excellent meal. You may have noticed the praises by Louis :-)

The choice was easy, since we had already promised to visit a pizzeria proposed by Stefan Weigel. Why? He had to cancel his trip right before the conference, which is still such a pity... we've missed him. However, a picture to prove that we've been there. You will easily recognize this to be a real "Italian" pizza...

Since we prove to be a real community, Jacqueline was so kind to share some pieces - hunger, anybody? The blurry picture is definitely caused by my shaking hands awaiting to eat ;-)

Okay, this was my first full day in Orvieto. Stay tuned for the next day - working, more sightseeing and - of course - the first party. What else should we do?Time Machine "off" and back to now: I would like to take the opportunity to express my deepest thanks to anybody who was involved in making the OOoCon 2009 such a great success.

Read you tomorrow,Christoph

PS: I know that the OpenOffice.org Planet sometimes has its own ideas how my blog postings should look like. It might be better to have a look at the original post on the OpenOffice.org User Experience Blog.